


Witness Our Ascension

by terminal



Category: Metal Gear, Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Both the metal gear and overwatch timelines are confusing as heck, Crossover, Gen, Time Travel Shenanigans, Weird Plot Shit, Weird Time Shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 22:44:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12263580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terminal/pseuds/terminal
Summary: 2018. A coup d'etat in Abkhazia. A cyborg from Maverick, a private military company. A mission. An interruption. A stranger from... elsewhere?"...Tracer, was it?"She nodded, giving him a strained grin. "Sorry luv, I'm not usually like this."





	1. Tracer: Wake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, Overwatch is full of potential timetravel/teleportation-gone-wrong shenanigans. Anyway, here's some timetravel-gone-wrong shenanigans. By the way, the chapter names have nothing to do with anything. I swear. There is no trace of any other fandom.

Dizziness. A dry, sticky feeling in her mouth and throat. A sharp pain in her left arm. Intermittent buzzing in her ear.

Tracer groaned. A sickening and horribly familiar sensation coiled in her stomach, and as she became more conscious of herself and her surroundings, she realised why.

Blood, semi-dried, leaking out from a large wound on her upper arm. An unfamiliar coastline, shrouded in night's embrace. The communications earpiece spitting out grating static. Her chronal accelerator emitting feeble sparks as if it was struggling to maintain her temporal position, and she closed her eyes again as her stomach roiled. The flickering of the machine strapped to her chest overlapped in her mind with the flickering and ghostly world that she saw while detached from the timestream.

_Ugh... Think positive, Lena._

Well, perhaps it was for the best that it wasn't a brilliant beacon for potentially hostile strangers. And judging by the movements of the waves lapping onto the beach, it did seem to be managing to keep her more or less in time with the rest of the world. The meter on her wrist showed that her charge was, surprisingly, near full.

_Then again, we'd only just started the mission when Talon... blew up the weapon? Why would they... I thought that..._

Her thoughts kept straying as static buzzed insistently at her ear, and her arm throbbed in pain.

Wincing, she turned her earpiece off and forced herself to look at the full extent of the damage. Considering that the explosion had shredded her jacket sleeve and had done... _something_ pretty bad to the back of her chronal accelerator, the damage to her arm wasn't as bad as it could have been. Even so, a large section of skin from her left shoulder to almost her elbow had either been burnt or abraded off, and there were also several cuts slicing across the area.

All Overwatch agents carried a small field medical kit, in case of situations where they were injured and without imminent aid. Tracer, while quick to learn, was not particularly good at it - and it was harder without instruction.

_C'mon, Lena. What do you think Angela and Ana drilled you in this for?_

After ten minutes of trying to clean her arm, ten minutes of struggling in the darkness with one arm and a mouth, as well as a minute or so of spitting out antibiotic paste after trying to open the tube with her teeth, she surveyed her handiwork.

"I need an actual doctor to look at this," she muttered. "Or someone with both their arms."

The messy jumble of bandages that she had haphazardly wrapped around her arm was thick enough to potentially serve as armour of some sort.

The sky was brightening, the creeping fingers of dawn revealing what looked like an area similar in climate to Numbani. The buildings that she had vaguely seen in the darkness were revealed to be in some disrepair, and there seemed to be some kind of military presence in the area. There were also signs of a recent fight.

She should find a place to take cover, before it got too bright. She remembered Strike-Commander Morrison speaking to Overwatch before its fall, his strict tone combined with his message of staying safe making for an oddly fatherly demeanour.

"Our mission is to bring peace and safety to this war-torn world - however, should you find yourself stranded and alone in a potentially hostile area, your own safety should be your main concern."

Near the shoreline, there was a cluster of boulders that hid a surprisingly comfortable and dry hiding place. Slipping in, she thought again about the various pieces of advice she had accumulated over the years.

"You gotta try and find clean food and water when you can, but if you've got no other options then dirty food and water is better than nothing at all. Even then, there's a bunch of stuff you can do with even basic supplies to make it less likely for you to get sick..."

Lucio had been talking about life before his meteoric rise to fame, but the advice still stood for her situation. She did hope that she would find a source of water other than the ocean before she got too desperate. Cleaning her arm with salt water had been bad enough.

"If you can, observe the opposition before deciding on your course of action. Depending on the hearts of those involved, it may be easier to surrender willingly, then flee once they have moved you themselves to a safer place."

For a monk, Zenyatta sure was a quiet expert at manipulation. Tracer herself felt that she was a little too brash to accurately read a person's flow of thoughts, especially of complete strangers that she couldn't currently observe, but hey, maybe it would be useful later.

"Working alone has its pros and cons, but I figure that the biggest hurdle is learning to assess the area without relyin' on other points of view. You don't have anyone backin' you up, so you've gotta teach yourself to consider the lay of the land a lot more carefully than you would in a team."

After this, Mister Jesse Mcree had gone on a bragging tangent about his various solo missions that were actually pretty cool, even through the self-aggrandising filter that he had put over the entire thing. And it never hurt to get a better view of the area. Tracer peeked out between the rocks, giving the buildings another once-over. Definite signs of conflict, and some odd shimmers in the air that were either heat distortions (this early in the morning?) or some kind of camouflage similar to Talon agent Sombra's.

A low, barely audible rumbling coming from the opposite direction snapped her out of her thoughts on the buildings. She quickly looked out towards the ocean, wincing as she bumped her injured arm, and saw... a low-flying stealth aircraft? Which had launched something... directly towards her hiding spot.

"Oh fuck."

***

Raiden had switched briefly to AR vision to survey the shore before landing. Aside from some distinct blurs that were likely to be soldiers in stealth camo, there didn't seem to be- Ah.

"Kev, there's someone on the shore."

"Uh, bit too late to change course now. I don't know if it's a coincidence or if Desperado somehow knew where you'd be inserted, but prepare for a fight."

"At this rate, I might not have to."

"...You _are_ heading directly towards them at high speed."

Just mere seconds before impact, the figure on the shoreline jolted in what looked like shock and vanished momentarily from view, accompanied by a blue glow.

As Raiden rose up quickly from the wreckage with his HF blade at the ready, he noticed two things.

The first thing he noticed was a young-looking woman in an odd outfit. She had her... firearms? He didn't recognise them, but whatever they were, they were trained on him. Even so, the woman's expression was more wary than hostile.

The second thing he noticed was that she was flickering intermittently, like a hologram with bad connection. A blue-ish afterimage, similar to the glow he had seen earlier, trailed after her movements.

Before he could react, however, she dropped her weapons and raised her hands into the air. Or rather, she tried to raise her hands, then winced in pain and chose to instead extend both her hands in front of her, palms up. Her left arm was clumsily bandaged, with some blood staining the white.

He lowered his blade slowly.

"Oh thank god."

Her voice was young, British, tired, and had an uncomfortably odd quality to it, like an old recording that skipped and buzzed in places.

"I'm pretty sure that this isn't the best time or place but..." She flickered again, and her expression twisted towards nausea.

"I need your help."

***

Dropping her weapons had been a double gamble on whether the stranger would consider a nonviolent approach, and whether her Recall would even work properly had he not. Even the Blink she had used to avoid his arrival had already messed with her temporal stability to a sickening level.

She was very, very glad that the gamble had, so far, paid off.

"You're not part of Desperado's coup d'etat, are you?"

His voice was a grating rasp that was sharply at odds with the pale and delicate features revealed by his now open visor. Or perhaps not. The entirety of his lower jaw was synthetic, after all. Her thoughts flickered briefly to Genji's mutilated body, then back to the question presented to her.

She shook her head. "I've got nothing to do with the coup or... Desperado?" She paused. "I'm affiliated with Overwatch, callsign Tracer."

Judging by the way he had spoken, he was here to do something about the coup - meaning that revealing her allegiances shouldn't be too much of a risk. Also there was the fact that there was a big-ass "TRACER" right there, on her tights. Not to mention the fact that she was practically an icon of Overwatch. 

It was actually rather surprising that he hadn't recognised her. She could have said "it's me, Tracer Overwatch", but she doubted that he would have appreciated the joke.

"You guys catch that?"

He was speaking into a communications device, she realised. Possibly built into his head, like Zenyatta or Orisa's.

She winced as she flickered again, and missed her footing as she came back. The lurching jolt as she fell combined with her chrono-sickness turned out to be too much, and she landed on her butt, immediately flipped herself over, and threw up.

***

"I'm not getting anything that seems relevant for 'overwatch', Raiden." Courtney sounded a little frustrated. "Even weirder, I'm not getting anything at all for her- oh. Oh dear."

The last part was in response to "Tracer" disappearing, reappearing, falling, and then vomiting.

"You should see if Doktor can suggest anything, I'll be looking further into her."

"Wait, you've already decided she's trustworthy?"

"I don't think she's in any state to do anything to you at the moment," said Kevin in the background of Courtney's mic. "I want a closer look at those guns, though."

"We can do that later Kevin, I'm more curious about- oh oops!"

Raiden heard a small crashing sound, and realised that she had waved Kevin away and knocked her mug off the desk in the process.

He sighed, and called up Doktor's Codec.

"Got the visual feed, Dok?"

"Clear as a crystal, Raiden. Her arm is concerning, but her... glitches, shall we say, seems more pressing."

"You don't say."

Tracer moved away from the small puddle of vomit on the sand and groaned, clutching her stomach. As she moved, Raiden saw the back of her chestpiece. A twisted shard of metal was lodged into the sleek white casing, blue sparks skittering over the scorched metal.

"...Tracer, was it?"

She nodded, giving him a strained grin. "Sorry luv, I'm not usually like this."

"There's a chunk of shrapnel in the back of the... thing you're wearing. I'm going to guess that fixing that would fix," - he gestured at her in general - "this?"

"Raiden, careful. That contraption may stop working completely if you pull it out. Your repair nanopaste should be able to mend broken wiring and such, but I am... unsure if it would repair any vital components."

"Got it. Tracer, brace yourself."

Raiden grasped the shard of metal firmly, and carefully dislodged it from its place. At the same time, he opened a pack of nanopaste and squeezed some into the damaged machine - or at least, tried to. The piece of shrapnel sent blue sparks through his body, bringing with it a twisting feeling as the world flickered around him. The repair nanopaste slipped through his briefly intangible fingers, and the entire thing fell into the blue core.

The core sparked violently, then went out. A second later, Tracer vanished, along with the dead machine.

"Fuck."

Before he could do anything, however, a brilliant aqua glow suffused the area.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads-up in case people are thinking this might happen, but there will be no Tracer/Raiden. None. Tracer is super gay you guys. (also I have a craving for non-romantic relationships between male and female characters that also aren't familial)


	2. Raiden: Abscond

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I somehow forgot to write about Boris in chapter 1 (even though he was there in my mind), so I guess I have to justify that now. Gotta reap what I sow. Or, uh, forgot to sow? Metaphors are hard.

The cold metal floor chilled his bare feet as he stepped forward carefully, trying to stay alert for guards and cameras through Colonel Campbell's unhinged chattering in his Codec.

He shook his head as his thoughts wandered back to his past as a child soldier under Solidus Snake. Focus on the mission. Forget the past. Or at least, ignore it as much as he could.

Exit the stomach. Descend into the bowels of this place. Avoid the guards. Snake was in... the ascending colon. Nearly there. Focus.

Get to Snake. Get his gear back. Stop Arsenal Gear. Kill Solidus. Don't think about-

Just as he approached the ascending colon, he was blinded by a flash of bright blue light.

***

Boris clenched his fist, glaring at the clip of the feed from Raiden's eyes. Blue sparks. His hand becoming intangible. The nanopaste falling into the core, which abruptly died. That blinding flash of light. Then... nothing.

"And all of this happened while I was on the shortest toilet break imaginable."

Kevin and Courtney nodded, both of them rather worried.

"В рот ебись!"

Not only was Raiden himself an extremely capable soldier and a personal friend, but his new body had been on the expensive end. Sure, the Doktor's customisations meant that they had managed to save some money - however, the parts required were still costly. On top of that, the mission accepted by Maverick still needed to be completed.

"Our best lead seems to be that woman, Tracer," said Kevin. "She said she's with a group named Overwatch, but, well."

Courtney sighed. "I can't find anything that seems to be related, which is pretty weird because I could swear I've heard both 'Overwatch' and 'Tracer' somewhere before."

Boris frowned. There definitely was something familiar about the words. He truly wished to be able to fully devote himself to looking for Raiden; however, there was still work to be done.

"We must still quell the Abkhazian coup. Once the area is peaceful, we can examine the area for leads on Raiden's whereabouts."

Kevin nodded slowly, and then paused.

"Our soldiers, even the cybernetically enhanced ones, aren't quite up to par with Raiden. And I'm not sure if they would be able to be inserted the same way as he was."

"...We do have another soldier who would be able, with a few modifications," said Boris, skimming through the Maverick personnel files. "He is not quite as experienced as Raiden, but he should be able to handle this."

"You mean that new guy? Waka?" Kevin looked skeptical. "He's... pretty green around the gills."

Courtney opened Waka's file, and tilted her head as she looked over it. "He joined Maverick just a few months ago, with no confirmed prior experience. Would he really be okay handling a mission of this much importance?"

"Yes."

Boris straightened up, and stretched. "I remember now, where I had heard the word 'Overwatch' before. Regardless of whether we send him into Abkhazia, we need to talk to him."

***

Tracer staggered up, wincing at the pain in her arm. Her breath caught at the sudden chill in the air, and turned to white mist as she breathed out. The dim glow of her chronal accelerator glinted of the shiny walls of a metal corridor lined with pipes, and... and...?

Her chronal accelerator?

Craning her neck, she saw that the damage to the back of it was almost completely gone. Only a few scorch marks and dents remained as only signs that a chunk of metal that had torn through it at all.

_That's... good. But where-_

Her thoughts were interrupted by a cyborg hand grabbing her shoulder, and the horrified expression of the owner of said hand. Which reminded her, she still didn't know his name.

"Keep quiet." His voice was a barely audible whisper. "I have no fucking clue how we ended up here, of all places, but-"

He flinched, and snapped his visor closed. At the same time, a small scuffling noise behind them made Tracer turn around.

A naked young man was staring at them in shock, arms raised as if he was shielding his eyes from a bright light. Tracer frowned. Something about him reminded her of the cyborg next to her, the fluffy blond hair in particular - but he was entirely human.

Yeah. Uh. No doubt about that.

"My name is David," said the cyborg quietly. "We're not your enemies."

The naked man relaxed slightly, then turned red and covered his crotch with his hands.

"I... I'm known as Raiden." The man shifted his feet warily, a movement that Tracer noticed was near identical to what David was doing. "Are... Are you two with Solidus?"

Before Tracer could say anything, David shook his head.

"We're just passing through. Which way did you come from?"

Raiden gestured behind him, still eyeing the pair suspiciously. "Back that way. There's a lot of security, and- and..."

He trailed off, looking sick.

"Thanks." David started to walk in the direction that Raiden had indicated.

"Tracer, we have to go."

Tracer jogged to catch up with him, briefly glancing back at young man. Their eyes locked for a moment, and warm amber caught the anger and fear in cold blue.

"David? He obviously needs help-"

"He'll be fine," he said, continuing to walk. As they rounded a corner, he opened his visor and Tracer flinched. His face - or what remained of it, anyway - was dripping in sweat.

"Hey, are you okay?"

He turned to her, and started speaking very angrily and also very, very quietly.

"Listen, you are going to have to explain to me what the hell we're doing inside the Big Shell Arsenal Gear, in two-thousand-and-fucking-nine, just in time to bump into my past self during what he currently believes is possibly the fourth or fifth worst thing to ever happen to him, and worse than that," he paused and glanced around for moment, then took a deep breath. "I _know_ that when I saw you on that beach, I had never seen you before."

He took a shaky breath, closing his visible eye for a moment.

"But since the moment we were seen by my past self, I'm remembering things that I know didn't happen. I saw you on the beach, and I remembered that odd encounter I had while escaping Arsenal Gear. Part of the reason I helped you was because... because there was something familiar about you and your name. But I _know_ that _nothing_ of that sort happened _at all_ , and... _ugh... what the fuck are you?_ "

The last sentence was hissed out at what was possibly the quietest shout in history. As she stared at his unnerved expression, Tracer realised two things. First, that it sounded like his memories had been hit by what Winston had called a "timetravel ripple effect". That thing that had fixed her chronal accelerator must have also "fixed" the safety that Winston had placed on it, to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

The second was that he seemed a lot more panicked than, say, someone who had never experienced memory issues before.

"David, I-" Tracer paused, thought for a moment, then continued - "Raiden, I can explain all this, but... I think you'll agree with me if I said that we should get out of this place first."

Raiden opened his mouth, then winced, snapped his visor closed again, and turned towards the corner that they had rounded.

"I'm coming back to listen in on us," he whispered, his voice hoarse. "I can remember deciding to backtrack a little after getting my gear back."

Well, at least the ripple effect was somewhat useful as a detector for exactly one person.

 _If the burst of energy from the chronal accelerator had carried Raiden as well as me,_ thought Tracer, _then maybe I could Blink with him too, assuming that Winston's safety for that was disabled as well._

The conscientious scientist had calibrated her Blink and Recall to carry only her, after a series of "disasters" involving bananas and peanut butter, as well as his glasses on one occasion.

She straightened up, and looked over Raiden's metallic body.

"How heavy are you, luv?"

"What?"

"I need to know if I can carry you, or if you'll have to carry me."

"...What."

He stared at her for a moment. That was really all the time he needed to realise that the woman with a confident smirk who stood before him had a Plan.

Well. It wasn't like he had any other options. Staying any longer within the presence of his past self was a sickening thought, what with the constant feedback of memories that were slightly off from what he thought he knew to be true.

He returned a slight smirk - well, more of a small quirk of his upper lip - back at Tracer.

"How confident are you about lifting something around the weight of an average motorcycle?"

***

"I just want to see if they're gone. It won't take long."

There had been something intensely and disturbingly familiar about the Cyborg Ninja newcomer. It had been that familiarity that had pushed Raiden into convincing Snake to let him go back to the jejunum, to see if he could get any answers out of "David". Snake had frowned slightly more than usual when he heard the name, but then said something that sounded like "it is a common name" under his breath, and allowed it (provided it only took a minute or two).

They weren't far from where they had left him. Stealthily approaching the corner, he tried to listen in on their conversation.

"Which... would be... outside?"

"...underwater... kilometers... New York."

"Seven point five... blink chain..."

"...Metal Gear..."

He couldn't hear their words very well, but from what he could catch of their whispered conversation, they were trying to leave Arsenal Gear.

Why? He had assumed that they were going to head up what he figured would be named the trachea, given the thematic naming for this place, towards the head. Then again, why had he assumed that? The woman (Tracer?) clearly had an injured arm.

Another flash of blue light flooded the hallway, and Raiden heard the surprised shouts of a few guards. Before he retreated back to where Snake was waiting, he took a look around the corner.

They were gone.

***

"So, Doktor, what has you so quiet?" asked Courtney, setting her mug of coffee down in front of her. Boris and Kevin had stepped out to question an oddly chipper Waka in another room, which left her to monitor and provide information to Maverick's currently deployed ground troops.

They were mostly in transit at the moment, though, and as mission briefing had been done earlier on, she was rather bored.

"Ah, Courtney." Doktor took a small sip from his own coffee, winced at the heat, and put it back down. "I have been investigating Raiden's disappearance - and found that there is something very odd about..." He fiddled with something, and a new window popped up on Courtney's screen. "...this."

Leaning in, she saw that it was Raiden's vitals feed... which was still online.

"Oh thank god! He's alive?"

Doktor frowned. "The vitals suggest that, yes. What is worrying is that I cannot quite... trace, ha, where the signal is coming from. The satellite feed says it originates, well..." He pulled up a different window, and gestured vaguely at the jumble of alphanumeric characters on it.

"What's... what are those numbers? They don't make any sense at all." She thought about a few possibilities, then pulled back in surprise.

"Raiden's in outer space?"

"Ah, if it was only that simple."

Courtney looked over at the feed of Raiden's vitals, and realised the issue.

Even with his body being mostly cybernetic, his few remaining organic elements were still too exposed for the empty void of space - but his vitals were perfectly healthy.

"The rough location that the coordinates give are not inside a space station, and even if it was, there should still be some anomalies present. Aside from a raised adrenaline levels indicating some stress, these vitals are completely normal."

"Do you think that someone could be completely scrambling the signal to throw us off?"

The Doktor shook his head. "Since the Sombra Collective incident, I took the liberty of setting a few extra precautions against interference of that kind. The hacker would have to get through without tripping a single hidden alarm-"

_Ding._

"Oops."

A blank screen flickered to life, showing what looked like a full-body cyborg flanked by a giant of a woman and an armoured gorilla.

"That alarm is pretty sneaky," said the cyborg, flicking their antennae. "Anyway, Winston, we're in. Smile and wave."

The gorilla nodded, and smiled, and waved.

"Greetings! I am Winston, and my associates here are Aleksandra Zaryanova and Lynx 17. We are - well, I am - a representative of Overwatch!"

Courtney scrambled up to call for Boris, and knocked over her second mug of coffee for that day.

***

It was a fairly quiet afternoon. A rising star waited for his... acquaintance at a seaside park in Brooklyn, bobbing his head to the music playing through his headphones. The sea breeze threaded its hands through his his dreadlocked hair, and he hummed as he moved his hands to an invisible rhythm-

* _zap_ *

"-in the middle of New York Bay...? Oh bugger."

He stared at the pair that had Blinked (yes, Blinked) into the air just above the park and promptly fell with a heavy thud. As the dust raised by the impact settled, the rising star got a clear look at the two and stepped back in surprise. The cyborg wielding a dangerous-looking blade (what was with cyborgs and katana?) was not familiar - but the woman perched on his back absolutely was.

"Tracer! It's good to see you!"

She looked at him, clearly confused.

"...Lúcio?"

***

Emily sat alone in her apartment, trying to ignore the news reports on her smartphone. Evening was creeping across London, the last rays of the setting sun painting squares of light on her wall.

Lena was late. Emily had the weekend off work, and Lena had promised that this week's mission was a simple in-and-out job and said that she would be back by next Thursday.

That was three days ago.

She knew that her girlfriend fought on the front lines against terrorists and other threats regularly, trained to be able to go toe to toe with powerful enemies, could even rewind her time to pull her out of sticky situations. And yet...

She glanced back at the headlines on her phone. _Large explosion in Numbani, recalled Overwatch to blame? Talon bomb threat backfires! Several Overwatch agents allegedly injured or missing?_

"Oh Lena... Please be okay."

She jumped a little as a sharp, military knock sounded on the door. As she walked over to open it, a million thoughts swirled dangerously in her head. 

Lena barely ever knocked when she came home. Any time she did, it was invariably the comedic _shave-and-a-haircut_ , followed by _NO-LEGS_.

She opened the door, and was greeted by a blue uniform and the Eye of Horus.

"Fareeha?"

The Egyptian soldier shuffled her feet slightly, looking intensely uncomfortable. Behind her was a young girl that Emily recognised as the MEKA pilot D.Va, as well as a large omnic carrying a child on its shoulders.

"Fareeha, where's Lena?"

Fareeha Amari took and breath and looked directly at her - and in that moment, Emily felt a chill that had little to do with the cool evening.

"It... It is my greatest regret to inform you that Overwatch agent Lena Oxton, callsign Tracer, has been officially declared Missing In Action."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is like the literary equivalent of the Lernaean Hydra - get through one plot point, and two more spring up in their place. I guess that means that reading this is actually a Herculean task lmao
> 
> Also, as the writer, Waka's identity seems really obvious to me even without the codename being a convoluted hint and it's gonna be revealed in the next chapter anyway so I'm just gonna leave this here: Waka ==> Ushiwakamaru ==> Minamoto-no-Yoshitsune ==> ???


End file.
